~ Doge told me to make a blog.

Tag Archives: nerd

So since I started reading comics again, I’ve had a lot of people tell me they think it’s dumb. They have it in their head that comics are for kids and that it’s stupid or childish for an adult to read comics. I’d like to address that.

I want you to take a moment to think about your 5 favorite TV shows. You don’t need to tell me what they are, just pick your 5 favorites.

Those 5 shows each get 24 episodes a year, running weekly (typically) at 48 minutes per episode.

Now imagine that the producers of those shows announced tomorrow that they will be changing the production format. From now on, they are not going to air twenty-four 48 minute episodes once a week for half a year. They’re going to split each episode into two or three shorter episodes and put out one partial episode a month all year long. They’re also going to stop bringing in a cast and crew to film the episodes. Instead, they’re going to pay a few artists to make the story board drawings look really nice and publish those. On top of that, you don’t get the episodes for “free” as part of your tv service. Instead, you have to pay for each episode – $4 a month if you want the episodes when they’re fairly new or $2-3 a month if you’re ok with being 3+ months behind on the show.

Now ask yourself this: Is the story good enough and are the characters interesting enough in any of your 5 favorite TV shows that you would still be willing to keep up with them? Would you be willing to pay $2-4 for each fragment of an episode with a full month between them, when all you’re getting is the storyboards?

If you answered “yes” for any of your favorite shows, chances are there’s a comic book series attached to it. One that is likely better than the show itself. You should look into that.

That’s what I’m getting when I buy a comic book, though. A good enough story and interesting enough characters that it is worth keeping up with and spending the money on.

All of the comics I read sell several hundred thousand copies nation wide, several million copies world-wide, every single month. A few of them have been doing so for over 20 years straight. Some of the characters in the comics I read have been around in comics for over 40 years…and my favorite comics aren’t even top name comics. You’ll never see a movie about many of the comics I read, in part because of how incredibly NOT-for-kids they are.

That’s another thing: Most comics are not for kids. Some of them aren’t even for teenagers. Comics are not the campy Saturday morning cartoons you remember from your childhood. Comic readers have grown up and their comics grew up with them. The average age of comic book readers is now 33-34. Comics today make R-rated movies and TV-MA shows look like a Sunday School class by comparison.

Batman’s villains are not the quirky, silly, campy characters from the days of Adam West, 90’s cartoons and Batman Forever. They are stark-raving lunatics in ways that even the new “darker” Christopher Nolan batman movies don’t fully convey.

When the new Batwoman’s father (a former soldier) found out she was trying to be the new Batwoman, he had her kidnapped and taken off to be physically, emotionally and psychologically tortured by professionals in order to either break her of her desire to be batwoman or prepare her for the job. She killed two of them escaping.

In the latest reboot of Superman, he is eternally one bad day away from becoming the genocidal monstrosity he was intended to be.

Deadpool keeps an old blind woman as a “pet” and when she misbehaves he puts her in a room full of sharp objects and leaves her there for a few days.

Reed Richards murdered the Hulk’s wife and unborn child, all because of his own megalomania. Not Bruce Banner’s wife and unborn child – The Hulk’s. Let me say that again: The Hulk, a being of pure, unbridled rage *fell in love, got married and conceived a child* and “Mr. Fantastic” murdered them both with a nuclear explosion that wiped out half a planet.

And that’s what the big names from Marvel and DC look like. That doesn’t even start to get into the smaller publishers.

Most comics are not for kids. Got it?

What it ultimately comes down to, is that comics are the modern myths. They are the new Hercules, Achilles and Odysseus. They are the Robin Hood, King Arthur and Beowulf of our day. They are the modern Dorian Grey, Captain Nemo and James Bond. They are the fantastical literature of flawed heroes, misunderstood monsters, conniving evils and worlds of moral grays.

And they are worth the $4 a month. How about the media that you consume?

Share this:

Like this:

The notion that “I’m a nerd, so I should like this” is a misconception about what being a nerd is – one that comes from not having been a nerd until after the end of The Dark Times, when being a nerd was the cool thing to be.

Being a nerd isn’t about which things you love, but about how you love those things and how you express that love. The misconception comes from the fact that there was a time before. Before Robert Downey Stark Jr. made everyone with $10 think they’re a huge comic nerd. Before Halo and COD made literally anyone with hands and a Microsoft XBox think they’re a “1337 hardcore gamer”. Before Wizards of the Coast turned D&D into Pen and Paper WoW so anyone with a 3rd grade education could play it. Before being a nerd became “cool” and really just meant you owned a t-shirt.

See, there was a time when being a nerd meant that anyone who wasn’t also a nerd would either avoid you entirely or treat you like shit just because you openly and exuberantly loved something they thought was stupid or weird. In that time, the social ostrasization by non-nerds created a social obligation among nerds to be more than somewhat knowledgeable about as many areas of nerddom as possible, regardless of how much you enjoyed them. You didn’t have to like what other nerds liked, you just had to know enough about it to be able to have a conversation, because if nerds didn’t do this, their already limited social circles would get even smaller.

Fast forward to the mid-2000’s, when it started to become “the cool thing” to be a nerd, and suddenly you have shitloads of people who don’t even understand what it means to be a nerd, but call themselves nerds because they finally let themselves experience something they once considered “nerdy” and realized it was actually pretty cool. Those would-be nerds look back at the nerds they used to ridicule or just avoid entirely, and they remember how that guy/girl who wore nothing but Marvel t-shirts could have a 2 hour conversation about the fundamental social and philosophical differences between TOS, TNG and DS9, and they get it in their head that that means if it is part of nerd-dom, they must like it…and then they start telling other nerds how “you’re not a real nerd because you don’t like <insert franchise here>” or “you’re not a nerd because you don’t know about <insert tidbit of information here>” exacerbating the whole thing…

…the point is, If someone tells you “you’re not a nerd because you dislike/don’t know about…”, fuck them. They don’t even understand what it means to be a nerd.

Love what you fucking love and love that thing the best way that you can love it, and don’t try to force yourself to love things you don’t. THAT is what being a nerd is all about.